I went to church yesterday, finally. I've been skipping out since D has been sick and unable to go. Even since he's been home, he has the home health nurse coming every morning so he still couldn't go. I can walk with the kids in the stroller, it is about half a mile. So I have no excuse, and I like going and the kids like going. It's just the getting up in the morning early and getting everyone ready thing I don't like.
I'm glad I went though, because it was the minister's last day after nine years. He got married over the summer and is now moving to D.C. to take a job in some kind of Interfaith organization. His wife was there, and she is Jewish. She's something in a Jewish Synagogue in D.C., not a rabbi, but some kind of role. So we've been hearing a lot of Hebrew words and mythos mixed in the sermons lately, which has been interesting. I could tell the minister may be leaning more in that direction.
That's what I like so much about the Unitarian Universalist Church. The people and the minister can lean anyway they like. It has all the good things about a religion, the sanctuary, the community, the inspiration, the learning, the activities...with none of the dogmatic crap of other religions. Sure there are some church politics going on at any given time, but in general, it is a pretty nonjudgmental place to be.
If you are unfamiliar, UU is a creedless religion. You can believe whatever you want about God, Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha, or whoever, you can be Pagan, you can be atheist, you just have to want to be a good person in this lifetime. The religion is there to help you do that. As Abraham Lincoln said, "When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion." UU's are okay with not knowing. They are okay with the journey of spiritual exploration. They are okay with others coming to different conclusions on the journey.
There are seven principles that are followed. You can find them here. They are liberal and do a lot of social justice work. The religious education program (which I teach in) teaches about Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hindu, etc. And also lessons that follow the seven principles. There is no recruiting or knocking on doors. They expect you to find them, they aren't going to preach to you. They grow when a particular church gets too big, a portion branches off to start another church. (Usually done geographically.) I'm not preaching to you either, just thought I'd tell you about it and a bit about how I got there.
My father's father, my grandfather was a minister for the Jehovah's Witnesses. Much of my father's family was/is JW. My father wasn't all that much into it, but was required, as the minister's son, to attend. They went to huge national conventions held in stadiums in New York, and my father would skip out and party. My mother didn't really come from a religious background at all, she came from a drunk, abusive, impoverished background. I don't know if she ever went to church growing up. When they met, my father's mother tried to get my mother to convert and she took classes and such for a while, but she thought it was crap and also thought that if my father wasn't into it, why should she be. So that was that.
When I was five, the JW overseer, the Watchtower, predicted Armageddon in October of 1975. This was one of many dates that had been set to no avail. When you are five, to hear that the world is going to end and you have to be saved by your grandparents or you will die is a hard thing to wrap your brain around. Apparently, my grandparents even tried to take custody of one of my cousins to save her from her worldly parents. Well, 1975 came and went, and as you can see, the world did not end. Even at five years old. I became skeptical of God and religion.
There was also these visits to my grandparents house where they would read us bible stories that didn't make any sense to me and would say bad things about my mother. Never my father. But they criticized my mother for working and leaving us with the babysitter all day long. I remember one time my grandmother had me peeling some carrots. She asked me where I learned how to do that, did my mother teach me? And I said, no. My babysitter taught me. And my grandfather said, "She taught you how to walk, how to talk, how to do everything. You don't even need a mother, do you?" I always want to tell all the mother-in-laws who diss their daughters-in-laws in front of the sons or their grandkids: I grew up with that. All it does is make the grandkids not particularly fond of you or want to spend any time with you.
I also remember that we couldn't have Christmas decorations on the outside of our house because they might drive by. And once we had a Christmas tree and they came over and my mother wouldn't let them come in so they talked out on the porch for a while and then they left. They would drop off the "Awake" magazine all the time and highlight articles for us to read. I remember reading one about sugar and how parents who let their kids eat sugared cereals were putting Satan in their kid's souls. I remember distinctly reading this right after I ate a bowl of Lucky Charms; picking out the marshmallows to eat. The pink hearts, yellow moons, etc. didn't seem like anything that would compel Satan to invade my soul. I also remember getting a little booklet about AIDS in the mid eighties which talked about AIDS as God's way to get rid of the sinners. It didn't make any sense to me, because I thought God was going to get rid of all of us except 144,000 JW's so what was the point?
For a few years, my mother took us to a congregational church. We went to Sunday School and my sister was in the children's choir. I don't have too many memories of liking or not liking this experience. We just went, and I remember doing a lot of projects where we cut out and colored a lot of Jesuses and pasted them in a book.
Apparently, though, they were kind of mean to my mom. I guess it was a bit of upper-crust types (of this small town in Iowa that really didn't have much of an upper-crust to begin with.) Anyway, they knew my mother's families' poor history, and that my father did not attend and his JW history, so I guess they weren't very nice to her. There was also some criticism about our attendance, and that pissed her off. I don't have any recollection of this, we just stopped going.
Other than going to church with a few friends here and there, that's my entire religious? upbringing. In high school and college, I went through a really analytical atheist stage. I did attend mandatory "chapel" at a private Methodist university that I attended my freshman year, and I thought it was comforting. (Although I did skip out a lot.) Then I transferred to the University of Nebraska, and that was that.
Until I met D in 1994. He was raised Catholic, but had also taken a lot of classes on world religions. He was also a math and physics whiz. What convinced me to rethink religion was what he told me about science and physics concepts. What we do know and what we don't know about the law of matter and energy. That it can't be created nor destroyed. So what happens when you die? Your body, the matter, decomposes. It is not destroyed, but it changes and recycles. So what happens to your energy? Does the heat just float into the atmosphere and fade into nothing? Is it transferred and recycled? There is so much we don't know, that we can't imagine. We are just little unaware ants going about our lives in colonies. Do you think ants really know why some little kid comes by and destroys their anthill? Or do they think its a natural disaster, or do they think that it is those divine beings up there? Well, actually, they probably can't think about it at all, they don't have the capacity. And I think as humans, we probably don't have the capacity to think and understand in terms of what the possibilities really might be in the universe. So we create religion to comfort us.
Religion comforts me, too. At least the UU religion does. I am okay with not knowing, but I like to explore. I like to learn the lessons from all religions, I like to be inspired to become a better person. I like to have a place where people are friendly and kind and are interested in similar goals, but are also open to diverse thought. I like that I can give my kids a place that will teach them about religion and values, but will also let them think for themselves. I like having the opportunity to teach kids these things.
D is pretty open about religion...although he looks at things from his perspective of growing up Catholic. (Just as my dad still tends to look at things through his JW upbringing, though he doesn't follow the faith anymore.) I'm glad that more or less, I grew up without the confines of one certain religious perspective. I hope to give my kids that same thing.
D goes to church with me most of the time. He struggles with UU a bit though. He says, "It's weird to not know what the person sitting next to you thinks about God or the Afterlife." I say, "Well, ask them." I really don't care what the person sitting next to me thinks about God and the Afterlife. I like sitting next to someone who I know probably has an open mind, doesn't have any dogmatic hangups based on the Bible or Koran, or about homosexuals or whatever. That they are likely here to try to be the best person they can be is enough for me.
It's a bit funny when you tell some people of differing religions (usually Christian in my experiences) that you go to a UU church. They ask you what they believe and you tell them and they just can't wrap their head around it. You have sermons but they aren't always based on the bible or any religious text. You have meditations but you don't have to pray. You sing songs from a hymnal that don't mention Jesus. Many of them end up deciding for themselves that it is a nondenominational Christian Church. I'd love to bring them to church for the Pagan celebrations of Los Dios de Muertos or Winter Solstice. Or the day when the UU Wiccans have their meetings. Tee Hee.
I always love UU look on religion. My mom and I attended one when I was a child and then later my hubby and I got married by a minster in that church. I always thought that of all the gathering together of ppl to worship they got it. LOL I however am still to lazy to get up and actually attend any kind of church. Maybe now that I am home I should find the time... I know I need to get involed with ppl... I can't let this disablity cut me off and keep me in the house.
Speaking of... can I ask... how do you tell people that you are disabled... or deal with it when they figure it out... I am so new.. and I still look young and healthy until you see me struggle to walk and move.. I donno if I should tell people or keep it to myself or what.. I donno anyone else who is disabled are there groups that meet and talk about this kind of stuff? are there resources on the net that maybe I could check out? I know I may not be permently disabled but I am right now and I just donno .. I feel so alone...
Posted by: achromic | October 27, 2005 at 02:48 PM